Hacker News Reader

Comment by dawnerd | Hacker News Reader

One thing I’d like to see outlawed is forced arbitration. Waiving someone’s right to a lawsuit is just wrong and only serves to benefit the company.

View on HN

They're outlawed in some countries, notably in Europe.

EU rules presume pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer contracts are invalid. France and Sweden completely prohibit consumer arbitration in certain cases. Germany won't enforce a consumer arbitration clause unless it's in a separate, signed document or part of a fully-notarised contract.

Lots of information available at https://www.hausfeld.com/news-press/mandatory-arbitration-in....

As another example, Quebec has similar rules for consumer contract. They also forbid contracting for a different choice of law, and unless through a notarial act (in the civil law sense of notary rather than common law notaries public), also forbid stipulating a different domicile to avoid the jurisdiction of their local courts.

Just like with your European example, none of this applies to business-to-business contracts.

What's even more odd, is that in some cases the company gets to select the arbitration company (and repeat business is based on outcomes).

I was amused to read recently that, thanks to having an ancient Yahoo! mail account, I am now subject to binding arbitration when I have a disagreement with a Yahoo! spinoff called "Oath." Also, I cannot participate in a class action or jury trial. That should work out well for me the next time they leak all of their user data.

Yep I saw that too- and I still use them b/c of stuff I set up a decade ago. I'm just not sure it's in fact worth the trouble to change (they are Verizon now).

And contracts that forbid people from joining class actions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com